THIS REVIEW CONTAINS HEAVY SPOILERS
If you have been following anime at all in the past year and a half, then chances are you are at least aware at Erased’s existence. One of, if not the biggest anime of the past year, both in terms of popularity and reception, even being just outside in the top 50 highest rated anime of all time on MAL, and waf, for a time, in the top 10 highest rated anime on MAL, even being higher rated than such anime as Perfect Blue, Kill La Kill, and Samurai Champloo, all of which some of the best anime I’ve ever watched.
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But, as someone with the most pretentious and elitist opinions on the internet, is Erased actually better than some of these incredible anime? Well, let’s find out.
Erased is an anime about Satoru Fujinuma, a 29 year old manga artist with the special ability of “Revival,” an ability that takes him back in time a few minutes whenever something bad is about to happen nearby. But one day, Satoru walks back home to see his mother dead on the floor of his house, only to get framed as the one to kill her the moment the police arrive. Then the “Revival” ability sends him 18 years back in time to 1988 in order to prevent Kayo Hinazuki from being abducted and murdered as a child, as well as uncover just exactly who it was that killed her. The show very quickly throws in elements of domestic abuse, time travel, changing history, and more into the mix to change things up from your standard murder mystery affair. But, despite having many interesting elements in the show, Erased has many glaring issues that keep it from reaching its full potential.
The first major issue is how underdeveloped many elements of the show are. While Erased has plenty of cool ideas and concept, very few of them feel as if they were used to the best of their ability. For instance, the show has child abuse intertwined with its plot, but doesn’t do much to comment on it or use it in an interesting way that makes it stand out from any other anime or film or TV series that has child abuse in it. It's just sort of… present in the narrative, floating there like a dead fish in a glass tank, while it is certainly there and is noticeable, it doesn’t do much at all in terms of interesting concepts or ideas. Same with the idea of belief. Not in any god or religion, but the concept of believing in people and their motives. This is very briefly touched on when Airi has a conversation with Satoru under a bridge while dodging the cops, and revisited once more towards the end of the series in a brief flashback. But, other than being mentioned and briefly discussed, and the discussion really is nothing more than Airi stating her conflicting thoughts on believing in certain people and their motives, the show does barely anything to make this potentially philosophical and interesting concept, well, interesting. While I won’t go into depth on any more concepts that aren’t used well for the sake of brevity, it certainly applies to many other concepts and ideas used in the series.
The second major flaw in the series is the hit or miss characters, in terms of both development and in terms of quality. A lot of characters in Erased, despite being featured frequently, are extremely underdeveloped, such as Satoru’s group of friends in the past. All of them beyond Kenya and Hinazuki get practically no development or characterization beyond a few archetypal traits, with some not even being blessed with the virtue of that. Then there are characters like Airi or Hinazuki’s mother that, despite being important to the overall plot, don’t get enough development and screentime to be memorable or interesting. Supposedly Airi gets more focus in the manga, which I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case considering how long the manga is compared to the short and sweet 12 episodes of the anime, but this isn’t a review of the manga. Heck, Airi is barely even in the anime, she really only has about 4 or 5 short appearances across the entire series. And, before anyone tells me to go read the manga for better development, I will eventually, it's even on my MAL plan to read list, but again, this isn’t a review of the manga. In terms of quality, some characters are likeable and interesting and a lot of others aren’t. For instance, Satoru feels very flat and uninteresting, though slightly less so in his child form, whereas Satoru’s mother is the GREATEST CHARACTER IN EXISTENCE. Seriously, all she does is make the plot less infuriating, make all the characters happier, cooks really well animated food, and generally just is best mom, 10/10, best character. Also, Hinazuki is good as well. But, none of the characters beyond Hinazuki or Sachiko are very likeable, interesting, or memorable. I mean, I guess Gaku is memorable for how bad of a villain he was AYO. But, overall, so many characters in Erased have little value to them, with little that makes any of them stand out as good, or even bad.
The third major flaw of Erased is the entire plot after Satoru saves Hinazuki, as to me, this is where the show ends. To me at least, the main draw to Erased is experiencing the story of Hinazuki and Satoru trying to save her life, which he successfully does 3/4ths of the way through the show. I didn’t care who the murderer was, which it was obviously Gaku from the beginning anyway, I just wanted Hinazuki to be saved in the past, since she was the only character beyond Sachiko that I even barely cared about. After Gaku is revealed as the villain, and Satoru finds out, Gaku attempts to murder Satoru by locking him in the car they were driving, putting it in neutral, and putting the car in the water with Satoru still in it. Satoru inexplicably survives for no reason whatsoever and it cuts to 15 years later in 2003, where Satoru wakes up from his 15 year coma. Ok, first, how did he survive drowning to death locked in a car underwater, second, how did anyone find him in a somewhat remote location, third, why does Gaku have multiple cars to use and remove like throwaway reddit accounts, fourth, how did Satoru not notice it was a different car when he stepped in it, fifth, how did Satoru not notice how suspicious it was for Gaku to buckle his seatbelt, sixth, why did Gaku act so suspicious when Satoru saw his stash of candy in his car when he used it only as a smoking substitute, seventh, what was the point of having Gaku eat candy when it does nothing in terms of the plot, eighth, if they did have Gaku eat candy, why not have him use it as a method of abducting children in the park, at least it’s something, ninth, why was this used as a red hearing as to Gaku being the kid killer, when he was the murderer anyway and AHHHHHHH. Anyway, back in 2003, we play catch up with all of Satoru’s childhood friends, see him go through some basic rehab, then see him talking with Gaku, and once Gaku takes Satoru up to the roof to kill him for no real reason, again Gaku has no motivation in this series other than the blanket term “plans”, and then Satoru gets all of his memories of pre-coma back, I think, the way the scene takes place, it almost looks like he had his memories the whole time and just now revealed it, and right as Gaku is about to kill Satoru, they have some weird and oddly vague conversation about how Gaku needs Satoru to live? I don’t know, it's stupid and it sucks, and then Gaku kills Satoru, but Kenya and the others set up Gaku this whole time to finally capture him, they do so, the end. What a mediocre ending. There is a brief epilogue and then Satoru meets Airi in this new timeline, which is ok I guess. Overall, the ending, and last fourth of the series in general is just really really bad, and not just in comparison with the first 3/4ths of the series. If your experience with the show was at all like mine during the first few episodes, you might as well stop watching after episode 9 or 10.
But despite those being all the major problems of the series, there are certainly a lot of more minor problems. For instance, a large amount of the symbolism in the show is really obvious and not very subtle, which takes away the entire point of symbolism. Time travel is shown with a loud sound effect and effect on the screen, violence and abuse is shown with the easily sean bruises or the color red, the universal color of blood and violence, and the villain is shown with his face in the shadows and creeping behind the characters. A lot of the child characters act like adults and like the have a great understanding of the world around them. Satoru’s revival ability is extremely poorly explained and doesn’t make much sense whatsoever. There are some smaller plot holes like Satoru purposefully triggering his revival ability or Sachiko’s stab wound changing it’s location when Satoru arrives at his house, or the fact that Satoru is constantly thinking out loud because he’s bad at thinking apparently. Hinazuki’s mother seems a little cartoonish and doesn’t play enough of a role in the story to be much of a hateable villain, and Hinazuki herself feels a little more like an amalgamation of every character trait that makes you want to care about a character rather than a real, believable human being. There are some other minor problems, but those are all the notable ones.
But despite many, many problems, there is a lot of good things in Erased. Those first 9 episodes, minus the first episode, are really strong, and would probably be a solid 7 or 8 out of 10 if it was just that part of the show. The direction is pretty decent, with many scenes that look extremely filmlike and cinematic, in a good way, with plenty of cool shots, something very shocking coming from the director of Sword Art Online. The animation is… pretty good overall, but it's clear most of the effort in terms of animation went into the scenes in 1988 where Satoru is a child. There are certainly some bits that look worse than others, but it overall looks pretty good. Each episode ends in a cliffhanger that makes it easy to keep watching episode after episode when binge-watching, which is a positive for people who like that, I guess. Again, most of my enjoyment in Erased came from watching the plot of the first 8 or so episodes unfold, rather than from any other side elements to make it more memorable.
Overall, I feel like for every element or idea or aspect in which Erased succeeds, there are 2 more elements that are either mediocre or straight up bad that ruin what would otherwise be a decent experience. Some characters are fine, but most are bad. Some plot points are fun, some are stupid and bad, some scenes are well animated, and others aren't. But, most importantly, very very few ideas and concepts feel like they are used to as much potential as they could have. Again, while I thought it was an overall enjoyable series, it has far too many issues in every aspect to be considered good or great. And because of all of this, I give Erased, a 5 out of 10. And thank you, for viewing.
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Jun 9, 2017
Boku dake ga Inai Machi
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THIS REVIEW CONTAINS HEAVY SPOILERS
If you have been following anime at all in the past year and a half, then chances are you are at least aware at Erased’s existence. One of, if not the biggest anime of the past year, both in terms of popularity and reception, even being just outside in the top 50 highest rated anime of all time on MAL, and waf, for a time, in the top 10 highest rated anime on MAL, even being higher rated than such anime as Perfect Blue, Kill La Kill, and Samurai Champloo, all of which some of the best anime I’ve ever watched. ... 
Apr 10, 2017
THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS
Hello everybody, Master Iruka, better known as my real name, Brady, and I recently completed an anime by the name of Noragami, an action - comedy - drama - mecha - slice of life - harem - psychological thriller - hentai anime, about a god named Yato, a lazy, homeless, and mostly useless god who one day wishes to have his own shrine dedicated to himself and have millions upon millions of religious follows across Japan. But, in order to collect money to one day get his dream shrine, he does odd jobs and delivery for anyone who will hire him. ... |
